Culture
Some cultural historians believe that the adjective "elfin" came to be used to describe the facial features of people with Williams syndrome because, before Williams syndrome's scientific cause was understood, people believed that sufferers of the syndrome, who have very charming and extraordinarily kind personalities in comparison to most people, were gifted with extraordinary, even magical, powers. This is often believed to be the origin of the folklore of elves, fairies and other forms of the 'good people' or 'wee folk' present in English folklore. Even though they are often described in the literature as "elfin-faced", Steven Pinker says in The Language Instinct that to him they often appear "more like Mick Jagger".
In a large review of the symptoms and features of the disorder, physicians Laskari, Smith, and Graham emphasized that family members of individuals with Williams syndrome typically reject use of terminology such as "elfin", as well as descriptions of social symptoms as "Cocktail Party Syndrome". Physicians, family members of individuals with Williams syndrome, and Williams syndrome associations alike have called for the curtailment of such terms.
Read more about this topic: Williams Syndrome
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The aggregate of all knowledge has not yet become culture in us. Rather it would seem as if, with the progressive scientific penetration and dissection of reality, the foundations of our thinking grow ever more precarious and unstable.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“The anorexic prefigures this culture in rather a poetic fashion by trying to keep it at bay. He refuses lack. He says: I lack nothing, therefore I shall not eat. With the overweight person, it is the opposite: he refuses fullness, repletion. He says, I lack everything, so I will eat anything at all. The anorexic staves off lack by emptiness, the overweight person staves off fullness by excess. Both are homeopathic final solutions, solutions by extermination.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“The highest end of government is the culture of men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)